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Team Fortress 2 toon shading in Season 2?

abdallahabdallah
edited October 2007 in Sam & Max
Oh come on you know you want to try it out! It looks absolutely delicious, and the nonflat style of it would work much better for Sam n Max than toonshading a la Windwaker.
Here's a pdf file from Valve where they tell exactly how it's done:
www.valvesoftware.com/publications/2007/NPAR07_IllustrativeRenderingInTeamFortress2.pdf

Oh pretty please with sugar on top consider doing something similar :)
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Comments

  • JakeJake Telltale Alumni
    edited September 2007
    I tried pasting the PDF into the rendering engine source code, and it's giving me compile errors. I guess it's not that easy.
  • Harald BHarald B
    edited September 2007
    What's wrong with the season one lighting?? The way Max looked in all the various lights in Reality 2.0 was stunning, especially when he turns his head in closeup when in front of the firewall. I can't imagine cell shading working better.
  • xChri5xxChri5x
    edited September 2007
    A Team Foress Sam & Max mini game would be cool. Each Character can be assigned a different class!
  • Sir LemmingSir Lemming
    edited September 2007
    I must say that looks absolutely amazing, way better than usual cel-shading would be for something like Sam & Max. It actually looks sort of SCUMM-ish. But they've already established the look with season 1, and I don't see them changing it any time soon.
  • KedriKedri
    edited September 2007
    Jake wrote: »
    I tried pasting the PDF into the rendering engine source code, and it's giving me compile errors. I guess it's not that easy.
    Did you make sure de computer was plugged in? And have you tried restarting it?
  • abdallahabdallah
    edited September 2007
    Jake wrote: »
    I tried pasting the PDF into the rendering engine source code, and it's giving me compile errors. I guess it's not that easy.

    When the screen is filled, just shake it firmly and it will reboot.
    etchdubya.jpg
  • MeaningOfLifeMeaningOfLife
    edited September 2007
    Jake wrote: »
    I tried pasting the PDF into the rendering engine source code, and it's giving me compile errors. I guess it's not that easy.

    Clearly you were using the wrong engine, you need to paste it into Valve's Source Engine, duh! I'm sure Telltale never got the license for that.
  • taumeltaumel
    edited September 2007
    Give me a nice character (like Sam, no Poppers are accepted!) and i rim shade it for you...
  • YohmiYohmi
    edited September 2007
    You just have to do eq1.png for dependant lightning, and eq2.png for independant lightning ! It appears so easy, I'm very disappointed by you Jake...
  • tobartobar
    edited September 2007
    Wow, that's a GREAT stylized look! Must be a real resource hog what with all of those rendering passes though.
  • wiedowiedo
    edited September 2007
    yeah.. i'm following TF2 for a long time (too long actually) and I really digg the new cartoony style.
    When I saw the trailers om S&M S2 I thought they would use the same technique's as TF2. But maybe this is something for S&M S3 :) (pleeeeaaaase, pretty pleeaaase, wet puppy eyes pleeaaase)
  • ShaggEShaggE
    edited September 2007
    Jake wrote: »
    I tried pasting the PDF into the rendering engine source code, and it's giving me compile errors. I guess it's not that easy.

    *sigh*

    You have to translate the PDF into LOLcode.

    LOLcode is an industry standard now... get with the times, man!

    Would you like us to just take over development for you guys? Yeesh! :p
  • abdallahabdallah
    edited September 2007
    Yeah even I can produce those visuals - here look
    scout1.jpg
    Presto. Didn't take me more than a minute either.
  • wiedowiedo
    edited October 2007
    I pre-ordered the orange box and played TF2 for ten hours in 3 days (+school and work).
    GREAT GAME, GREAT GRAPHICS!

    The graphics are totaly different from the graphics of S&M, more pixar like. Maybe S&M is more cartoony, but I think this toon shader thing will look great on S&M.

    I also like the use of motion blur and the facial animations of the characters in TF2. Telltale has to check this game out, just for study :)
  • TelltaleToolTelltaleTool
    edited October 2007
    Many of us already play TF2, thank you very much. You're not going to see those graphics in season two, though. It's not even our style, really :(
  • JakeJake Telltale Alumni
    edited October 2007
    Yeah we all play it quite a lot, actually. Doug's got a dedicated server running in the office for LAN matches. Digging around the general forum will even reveal a thread Nick created about it.
  • MaratanosMaratanos
    edited October 2007
    Harald B wrote: »
    What's wrong with the season one lighting?? The way Max looked in all the various lights in Reality 2.0 was stunning, especially when he turns his head in closeup when in front of the firewall. I can't imagine cell shading working better.

    What's wrong? Tons.


    It WOULD have looked stunning, surely, if it weren't for the complete absence of reflections and shadows. Without these, the lighting lacks much in terms of realism.


    Just compare the office render for season 2 with the office screenshot, and you'll know what I mean.
  • abdallahabdallah
    edited October 2007
    Absolutely nothing wrong with the graphics so far! This is just a really cool way to render them.
  • JakeJake Telltale Alumni
    edited October 2007
    We'd like to expand our renderer out to do cooler stuff, and in fact have already made some enhancements on the console side for CSI, like per pixel shading for cleaner environment/specular maps (if you look at the mobile crime lab vehicle on the 360 and then compare it to the PC, the new tech that made it into the 360 version is a noticeable improvement) and generally making things look nicer. We're always improving basically everything ... if you go back and play Out From Boneville then jump into the last few Sam & Max episodes it's obvious that things are always slowly building. One big difference between Telltale and the standard game company, though, is that we don't sequester ourselves in the back of the office for two years writing a new rendering engine for every game we ship -- the updates to the visual side get snuck in slowly either as we need them, or when a programmer has time and is tasked to spend it on that sort of thing in between shipping episodes, or between seasons. There's always progress going on, and we're always discovering new things we can do even within the existing toolset (there are some effects in season two that people will probably be surprised by, and I probably nearly broke the engine doing some of the composing for the opening title sequence), but from a single episode or season to the next, there aren't a stunning amount of leaps forward in every arena. All that said, I think people will be surprised by some of the stuff we'll be churning out over the next year. Probably not Team Fortress 2, but, you know. :)
  • abdallahabdallah
    edited October 2007
    Cool, definitely looking forward to seeing it :) I did notice the shader stuff in Season 1. And I understand you have a completely different model than big companies like Valve. I'll take good art direction over the Unreal 3 engine any day, and that you have :)
  • wiedowiedo
    edited October 2007
    wow.. that posts needs some formating :)

    But thanks for the explanation Jake. And yes I noticed graphical differences between the sam & max episodes mainly because I played them al in 2 weeks.

    I'm looking forward to the new Sam & Max season 2 graphics and the graphical improvements each episode. But graphics aren't that important for S&M!

    Please focus on the story, humor, music and suprises (like reality 2.0) :)
  • taumeltaumel
    edited October 2007
    @Jake
    Can you say something about the reasons why TTG prefers developing it's own engine instead of licencing middleware? As most of the time obviously there are pros and cons, so i would be interested why you went your route.
  • TelltaleToolTelltaleTool
    edited October 2007
    Because our engine rocks?
  • JakeJake Telltale Alumni
    edited October 2007
    I cant talk much about or show you any of the engine, but it's *very* tailored to rapid development of story-based games. It's not a generic graphics engine that we're building adventure games within, it's a set of very easy to use tools that are 100% aimed at building these games in a 3D environment. There aren't many (if any) other game engines around that would allow you to build a cinematic adventure game in as little time as we can with the Telltale Tool. As I'm not a programmer, I couldn't really tell you the downsides, though you're right that there are probably some trade-offs somewhere.
  • taumeltaumel
    edited October 2007
    Out of curiosity i really would be interested to learn something about how your workflow looks like if that's possible.

    When i was asking after the middleware i didn't meant this in respect of the logic/scripting part as i already thought that there aren't, if at all, any tools around which are for sale and which fit your personal needs but in respect of something like the rendering engine, contrary to the benefit of beeing in full control (hopefully), you always have to keep it up to date, developing it further, maintainance like fixing bugs, writing workarounds and so on. The more eye candy the more pain unless you don't increase just the specs and care about fallbacks. So it's not this clear how you draw the line here if it's a drag or a benefit doing such things on your own.
  • JakeJake Telltale Alumni
    edited October 2007
    Ah gotchya. Sadly that strays far enough away from anything that I actually do day to day that someone else -- a programmer probably -- would need to answer.
  • taumeltaumel
    edited October 2007
    Okay, i'm waiting... :O)
  • ErwinErwin
    edited October 2007
    Pre-ordering the Orange Box will get you TF2 in advance, right? --But does anyone know if that goes too if you order TF2 stand-alone via Steam?

    --Erwin
  • JakeJake Telltale Alumni
    edited October 2007
    I think its just part of the orange box offer, but I'm not sure.
  • MelMel
    edited October 2007
    Is the box really and truly orange? Is it a sunny, citrusy orange or more of a burnt orange?

    Sorry for the spam. I'm actually curious about the packaging, though.
  • wispwisp
    edited October 2007
    since the question if telltale will use tf2-style shading for sam & max is answered, i guess we could talk about it...

    i think the orange box will really be orange. i would make abolutely no sense calling something orange and then giving it a different color. the only exception being if real oranges were included. but then it would be more a box of oranges than an orange box..

    ohh and if you're interested in the hue of orange, they will use, you should check the valve hp. they have a lot of orange there and i should be the same that will be printed on the box. but you can never be sure..
  • JakeJake Telltale Alumni
    edited October 2007
    I don't quite know what Valve is going for with this box, but...

    pc_halflife_2_orange_box.jpg
  • Guybrush ThreepwoodGuybrush Threepwood
    edited October 2007
    Yeah, not the best box art around...
  • TelltaleToolTelltaleTool
    edited October 2007
    It'll stand out like mad on a shelf though.
  • JakeJake Telltale Alumni
    edited October 2007
    It sorta looks like cartooney anti-virus software or something, though.
  • MeaningOfLifeMeaningOfLife
    edited October 2007
    Jake wrote: »
    It sorta looks like cartooney anti-virus software or something, though.

    This sounds more fun than that crazy "weather game" that came with Nintendo Wii.
  • LuigiHannLuigiHann
    edited October 2007
    MeaningOfLife wrote: »
    This sounds more fun than that crazy "weather game" that came with Nintendo Wii.

    http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/12/20

    Back on topic (sort of) I agree that the Orange Box looks weird. The Portal logo in the middle especially; Portal sounds like a cool game, but "figure falling into hole" doesn't make a great box cover.
  • wiedowiedo
    edited October 2007
    i thought the orange box was all about buying HL2 (plus the two episodes) and getting TF2 and Portal for free. But the box cover doesn't look like it.
    It's more like: You get a little bit of Gordon, more Portal and a lot of TF2.
  • TelltaleToolTelltaleTool
    edited October 2007
    That's what it is for me :)

    I'm not that interested in Half Life, but I love TF2 and I'm excited about Portal.
  • MelMel
    edited October 2007
    The little stick man took one look at the two grimacing guys on either side of him (who could easily rip him apart without any weapons) and decided to hightail it out of there! :D

    It looks very burnt orange to me and yes, that will definitely stand out! :p
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